Gaming on a Mac.

One, if not the only, drawback of going Mac is gaming. They are no good games for mac!..The hardware sucks!...I want DOOM 3 @ 60 fps on my ibook..etc etc etc. The cries of a mob of angry gamers is heard throughout the internet. They are solutions for this tho, Have a pc for gaming, and mac everything else, my case. Stray away from PC gaming, and get a console. Another option, look for alternative gaming solutions on the mac.

This is the case for this post, an alternative. The hey days for gaming, as per yours truly, were the SNES days. Sure other consoles have had awesome fun games, but I think the SNES era had something "more". Something that until today has been missing from lots of games and consoles. Maybe it was the time we went through...those worry free middle school times..

Regardless, I think one of the best gaming experience you can have on your mac, is to revive those days. All thanks to emulation and random ROM sites (which you can find using Google). Well what do you need to revive those days?

• An emulator: SNES9X Custom 1.43 -Largely just SNES9X but added features like OpenGL Sal mode rendering, which makes everything look "nicer".


• A Gamepad: You aren't serious if you wanna play with your keyboard. I have a Logitech Dual Action. Pretty cheap to buy..not the best out there but it does the job.


• The Games: Up to you...so many to choose from..you know you have to have..F-ZERO..Mario Kart...Zelda..Super Mario All Starts..MK II...list goes on and on.

There's also the Arcades. God knows how much money I spent during 9th/10th. grade at Miracle Center Mall playing Xmen Vs. Street Fighter, Killer Instinct (also on SNES), Area 51 shooter.. those were good times as well. 10 bucks gone, and u were left with bitter taste of getting your ass kicked. Not to worry, you were looking forward to the next sunday where you had the opportunity to give it one more go at it. You can also revive that experience in part, with no money to drop on quarters this time!

Take a look at MacMAME. A port of the MAME project to Mac. This is harder to set up in part, as it is not as straight forward as SNES emulation. For starters, ROM downloads are a lot bigger than SNES'. At times you may even encounter the need to download a parent version of a game to get it work. A pain, yes. Regardless plenty of games are just a straight download, like some Street fighter games, and old 80s games. There's gamepad support so always a plus. Be careful, since plenty of games tend to run sluggish on the Mac port, like the MK series.

Always remember, a faster machine will give you better results. I play on my 1.33Ghz G4 Powerbook, never have had a speed problem, even with a whole crazy battle in Marvel vs Capcom, so take that in account. A gamepad a must, and WHO said ytou can't have fun gaming on a mac?